Four and twenty

I could get a million awards and I'd still get that total Miss America hands-to-face "ohmygod!  I can't believe it!  Is that really my blog linked here? I had no idea!" feeling I get whenever it happens.

There is nothing like opening up my Google Reader first thing in the morning and seeing fever on someone else's feed.  It's so weird.  Usually I get pissy like someone else has a blog named fever so I click on it thinking I'll land on something awesome that I'll just absolutely hate out of spite and find myself standing there at the other end.

It's un-nerving.  Every time.

Have you ever had your makeup done by a superstar makeup artist who doesn't let you look in the mirror until it's all done?  And then you can't stop staring and trying to find some semblance of yourself in there somewhere? 
Or gotten pictures developed (as if, who does that anymore?) and you see someone cute in one of them and it takes you a realize that you are that cute someone?
It's kinda like that.
I can't get used to it.

***

My first one comes from Brndoutw8ress at Confessions of ME.  I found her a month or so ago and when I read a few posts I was completely blown away by what was there and I couldn't figure out why she only had a few readers.  Then I looked at the archives and realized that it's because she just started blogging.  There's nothing that I love more than a good tell-all.  And this is a good tell-all for sure.

As always, there are rules for this award, and the one that I'll follow is that I have to disclose 7 secrets about myself that you might not know.

I love these.  And hate them. 

I love talking about me but hate thinking up things that you might care about but don't know about yet.  There's a lot of disclosure on the seven hundred some posts I've slapped up here.

1.  I had to talk to my mom today about being a Living Will Surrogate this morning.  It was kind of a bad connection and all I heard was "I need to talk to you about something really serious regarding... this is kind of last minute but are you willing to be a surrogate... I have to talk to... but I hope you will".

After my heart started again and she cleared up what the hell sort of surrogate she was talking about I agreed.  Basically my mom wants to be taken out back and shot at the first sign of mental or physical deterioration.  Which, checking my watch, was sometime back in the early nineties.

Let me know when that will is drafted, mom.  I'll be home for Thanksgiving. 

It's weird to think about that kind of stuff.  That there might be a day where I have to go in to pull the plug.

On my mom. 

I'd have to get a babysitter if Jake is still young.  And he would ask me where I was going.  And I'd say "up to Mimi's" and he'd ask to come and I'd say "no, baby, mommy has to go kill Mimi and it's something she wants to do all by herself" and he'd say that he can help and I'd say no and then there'd be an awkward silence right before he'd start to cry.  Not because his Mimi was dying but because he had to stay home instead of helping do something he knows nothing about.

It's weird to think that I'll ask Jake to do that for me one day.

"Tug the plug, boy", I'll say.  And he will say okay and wonder what it will be like when he has to tell his children to do the same.

2.  Everywhere I went yesterday I was met by a gaggle of crows.  It was funny at first.  Then creepy.  Then outright scary.  I sent a text to Dave about it just in case it was an omen.  It wasn't.  Unless crows strike a few days before you die. 

Each place I went, I looked around and really took things in just in case it was the last time I had a chance to do so.  It's amazing how beautiful everything is when you look at it to say goodbye.

I had to stop that game before I picked Jake up from daycare.

3.  I like mayonnaise on my soft pretzels, but I usually settle for cream cheese because it's more socially acceptable.  Mustard is the devil's pus.  Seriously, why would anyone eat that crap on anything?

4.  World Traveling used to be huge on my priority list.  Now I'm just as happy staying at home.  Please don't tell anyone I said that.  It makes me feel very non-continental and sorta bumpkin-y

5.  If I sit very still in the dark, horrible things from my past that I worked really hard to forget about sneak back into my brain.  Ghosts are very real and they live under my bed and in my closet and they move with me wherever I go and keep up with me no matter how fast I run.

I'm proud that I can process these things and get past them instead of letting them process me.  In a sick way, I'm glad these things happened to me because I think they've made me a better person.

6.  I'm geekishly thrilled with my improv class. 

The first few classes, the teacher talked a lot about trust.  I didn't get it.  Trust?  I don't do that well.  Especially in a room full of people who are watching me do goofy things with my voice and face and body that I've never done before.

Then I got it.  And then the skies opened up and the theatrical gods smiled down upon me because I finally understood. 

I don't have to like everyone there, or think they are brilliantly talented or wildly funny, or give them my house key or this blog address, but I can trust them there in that space.  I can trust them to let me be me, and they can trust me to let them be them and we can all get up there and do our thing.  You don't find that in too many places in real life.

7.  Sometimes I question people's judgement (in my head) because they think their kids are gorgeous and perfect but I think they are nothing but little creepsters.  Or sometimes I look at the kids in the park and think about what they might do with their lives and what they might look like when they grow up and all the filthy stuff that they might get themselves in to if they aren't careful and all the wonderful stuff that they might if they are. 

And I think that if it's okay to think that big people are gross, it's okay to think that little people are gross too.  You don't get a special pass just because you are still in the single digits. 

I do it with my own kid too.  Stare and think, I mean.  Not give him a special pass.  Even he doesn't merit one of those most days.

Sometimes he's so odd looking that it's hard to look him dead in the face without crying about it.
Sometimes he's so beautiful that it's hard to look him dead in the face without crying about it.

***

The next comes from Alix at Casa Hice, who I'm sure you are all reading from the last time I linked to her.  If you aren't, you should be.  Her blog is one of those mixes of life and love and luck and loss that so many people try to get down into words but few people accomplish.  Alix just hit 100 followers on her blog the other day, so how's about you check her out and push her way over?